All's well that ends well and starts well.

The authors show that innovation energy, a new concept, is needed to overcome the many obstacles occurring in innovation processes and helps converting the employees' innovation properties into innovative work behavior. Based on a survey among 304 R&D employees, the authors show that the employees' cognitive detachment from work and their degree of creativity are curvilinearly related provided that the employees are highly motivated for creativity. The paper adopts a patent-based methodology and an input-process-output-outcome model to analyze how R&D projects achieve specific outputs and outcomes starting from certain inputs and by employing open innovation practices. We congratulate Katharina Hölzle with her new job as a professor of Technology Management and Human Factors at the University of Stuttgart, leading the institute for Human Factors and Technology Management as well as the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering. [Extracted from the article]